“Allegra?” Ione could have stamped her foot. She restrained the impulse. She had too many impulses, and she was always having to restrain them. It made life varied and interesting, but if you didn’t watch out, it could land you in a mess. She certainly didn’t want to have a row with Geoffrey, and about nothing at all. She looked at him frankly and said,
“Aren’t you worried about her? I think you ought to be. She looks dreadful.”
He frowned.
“She was tired last night.” Ione shook her head.
“Has she seen a doctor? What does he say?”
“She has seen two-one here, and one in town. They both say the same thing-she is not very strong, but there is nothing wrong with her.”
She drew a long breath of relief. She was aware that he was watching her.
“What did you think was wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her like this-no life, no interest. She didn’t even seem glad to see me.”
He gave rather a rueful smile.
“Too bad-and I’m afraid it’s all my fault. The fact is we had had a bit of a tiff, and you arrived before we had time to make it up. All over now and nothing to worry about, but Allegra is like a child, she can’t be happy if she thinks I’m vexed.” Ione felt herself put in the wrong-very charmingly, kindly, even gaily. She was a maker of mountains out of molehills. She was that immemorial butt of all comedians, the visiting in-law who is determined to find something wrong. She had a very good sketch on those lines herself, and it always went down well. She turned on what she hoped was a friendly smile and said,
“How tactless of me not to come by a later train and give you time to put things right. But I don’t see how I was to know.”
He laughed cheerfully.
“No need to worry. Our quarrels never last very long.”
He was locking the little dark stairway as he spoke.
“I think it’s better to keep it shut up-don’t you? It’s of no real use, and it’s so near this other one that anyone might make a mistake and perhaps get a nasty fall. Now, you see, this one isn’t nearly so steep.”
Like the other it was closed in by its own door and ran down between dark walls. It was certainly less precipitous, and perhaps-but she was not entirely sure upon this point-it did not smell quite so strongly of mould. It came into her mind that a medieval house might be terribly interesting to visit, but she could think of nothing she would dislike more than to have to live in one. As she followed Geoffrey up and down staircases and along narrow and most bewildering passages, the impression deepened, and she found herself dwelling passionately upon the mental picture of a perfectly modern house full of windows and without a dark corner in it anywhere.
“Now,” said Geoffrey, “this is the real gem of the place.” He opened a door, not this time upon one of those horrid enclosed stairways, but upon a flight of stone steps going down, a long way down, into a tiny banqueting hall. Barely twenty feet long, it had the height of two floors and a beautiful arched roof, the windows just glass slits in stone walls which were covered in panelling.
The first opening of the door took Ione by surprise. It was like standing on a cliff and looking down. And the place was full of shadows.
And then Geoffrey lifted his hand to a switch and all the lights came on, ten down each side of the hall, candles held in iron sconces set against the panelling, and above them in the middle of the right-hand wall, shining in red, and blue, and gold, the crest and coat-of-arms of the Falconers. The colours were bright and fresh without being garish. Geoffrey was explaining how carefully they had been restored.
“That American knew quite a lot about it. He didn’t mind how much trouble he took, or what he spent. What he kept saying was that he’d got to get everything just dead right.”
The stone steps had no railing. Ione came down them carefully. She waited until she had reached the bottom before she said,
“How do you know? About the American, I mean.”
He laughed.
“Nothing mysterious about it-Miss Falconer told me. The last survivor, you know-the one I’m trying to buy the house from. She lives here in the village in one of the cottages. Rather a come-down after this place, poor old thing, but she says she prefers it.” Ione had a warm feeling for Miss Falconer. As an alternative to living in the Middle Ages on practically nothing a year, one of the cottages which she had seen as she drove through the village sounded rather cosy. There would at any rate not be a torture chamber under the kitchen floor. As she was quite determined to be tactful, she kept these thoughts to herself, admired the old fireplace-“in its original state”-the massive stone slabs which formed the floor, and the long refectory table which with its dozen massive chairs had, so Geoffrey assured her, been here at least since Tudor times.
“We must give a dinner-party whilst you are here, and let you see it in all its glory. There’s a serving-hatch in that corner, so the food does get here hot, but those steps down from the second floor are the only way in and out unless the great doors at the end are opened, and apparently there’s a heavy tradition that that is only done for the marriage of the heir or at his funeral feast. As I told you, the last poor chap was killed in France and buried there. But Miss Falconer kept to the old custom. She had a memorial service for him in the village church, and after it the big doors were opened and all the villagers came trooping up for bread and ale, just as they had always done when the lord of the manor died.” Ione felt a shiver go over her. The place was as cold as a well. But the rest of the house was warm.
“Doesn’t the central heating get as far as this?”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t. Miss Falconer absolutely refused to let anyone touch this room, and I must say I think she was right. It’s the perfect fourteenth-century banqueting hall in miniature, and it would be sacrilege to lay a finger on it. It’s a case of piling up the old Yule log on that enormous stone hearth when we throw a party. We must get some people in whilst you are with us. But I needn’t keep you here if you’re cold. Come along up the steps again, and we’ll just go down one of our many staircases and have a look at the cellars.”
The cellars were really not so bad. The American had had them whitewashed, a triumph of common sense over the historical variety, and as the furnace which supplied the hot water system was right in the middle of them, they were neither cold nor damp. Doors stood open to allow the warm air to circulate, and there was plenty of bright electric light.
But with the opening of an arched door at the extreme end of the last cellar cheerfulness vanished from the scene. The door itself was immensely old, immensely thick, and in addition to a portentous lock there still hung from rusted staples the two iron bars with which it could be made secure. Geoffrey lifted one of them and showed her how it fitted into the slot on the other side. When the door swung back a breath of appalling cold and damp came up out of the darkness. And then, with a click, there was light striking up from below, making odd shadows on the worn stone steps. They must have been very old, or they must have been very much used.
Ione descended them with reluctance. If she hadn’t made up her mind to be tactful at all costs, she would have seen Geoffrey at Jericho or in one of his own dungeons before she would have abandoned the American’s warm and whitewashed cellars. If it hadn’t been for Allegra, she would just have stamped on one of the stone flags and said no. As it was, she went down, and it was quite the horridest place she had ever been in. Walls and floor were of stone, and they ran with a cold sweat. There were slimy trails on the stone. There was air to breathe, but it was heavy and unwholesome. Two doors stood open to the space into which the steps came down. Prison and torture chamber, as Geoffrey informed her in a robustly cheerful voice. But when he proposed to conduct her into these revolting apartments her tact gave out and she assured him with some warmth that she would take his word for what they were, and that she absolutely refused to set foot in either of them. As this appeared to amuse him, there was no harm done, and she consented to let him show her the well.